In an Instagram reel with over 2.8 million views, Zohran Kwame Mamdani speaks to New York City's South Asian diaspora in Hindustani — the lingua franca of pre-colonial northern India before the Hindi-Urdu split — and explains New York's ranked-choice voting system using five cups of mango lassi. At one point in the video, he leans forward and spreads his arms in an open embrace, instantly recognisable to Bollywood fans across the world as Shah Rukh Khan's iconic pose from Baazigar (1994). In the same video, he also refers to "roti, kapda, aur makaan", a Hindi phrase alluding to food, clothes, and shelter — the basic necessities of life.
Since announcing his mayoral bid in October 2024, the charismatic 34-year-old assemblyman from New York has gained a seemingly unstoppable momentum with his creative campaign videos, using humour, pop culture references, and Bollywood songs to explain his plans for providing affordable housing, groceries, and free public buses to working-class residents of New York, one of the world's most expensive cities, as its first South Asian Muslim mayor.
Although Mamdani has downplayed his identity as an immigrant American of South Asian Muslim and Sikh descent, it matters that someone like him has emerged as one of the front-runners of the Democratic primary for the 2025 New York City mayoral election at a pivotal moment in American history when the Trump administration has been openly hostile to international students, immigrants, workers, and refugees of colour.
Donald Trump's second term in office has been defined by aggressive ICE raids, contested deportations, detentions, and denial of entry to international students, journalists, academics, and visitors critical of his divisive domestic and foreign policies. In many ways, Mamdani embodies the antithesis to everything Trump and the Republican Party represents. Mamdani was born in Kampala, Uganda, to Mahmood Mamdani, a Mumbai-born Ugandan-Indian scholar, author, and political commentator of Gujarati Muslim descent, and Indian-American filmmaker Mira Nair in 1991.
Mamdani moved to New York in 1998, when he was seven years old, and became a naturalised US citizen in 2018, when he was 27. He has been a member of the Democratic Socialists of America since 2017, and began his political career working for Democratic Socialist candidates Khader El-Yateem and Tiffany Cabán's unsuccessful campaigns for the New York City Council. He was elected to the New York State Assembly from the 36th district in 2020, and re-elected unopposed in 2022 and 2024, becoming the first South Asian, the first Ugandan, and only the third Muslim assemblyman to hold that position. His mayoral campaign is shaped by this lived experience as a minority Muslim, immigrant, multilingual, brown man navigating post-9/11 American politics.
That is why Mamdani's campaign for the New York City mayoral election marks a watershed moment for the South Asian American community, and by extension, for all immigrant, first-generation, naturalised, and BIPOC Americans seeking more than performative inclusion in the American body politic. It marks a move toward a sense of belonging that does not require assimilation into whiteness or the erasure of cultural specificity in order to be legible or legitimate.
What's most remarkable about Mamdani's campaign isn't the fact that it's historic. Instead, it's how he is choosing to historicize it. Unlike Kamala Harris' disastrous presidential bid in 2024, Mamdani's campaign is not just a glossy diversity narrative wrapped in vague promises. It is unabashedly materialist and intersectional, grounded in Socialist ideas of economic justice, housing rights, and transit equity. His team has knocked on nearly 9,00,000 doors, and his base includes everyone from Black and Hispanic communities in Brooklyn to Bangladeshi and Pakistani youth canvassing for the first time in areas like Jackson Heights, Midwood, and Kensington.
These are not simply 'vote banks' being pandered to — they are multiracial, working-class power blocs being mobilised in a way America hasn't seen since the 1960s. In recent weeks, Mamdani has picked up endorsements from Democratic heavyweights like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, as well as cross-endorsements from contesting candidates Brad Lander and Michael Blake in a near-perfect example of coalition-building.
Still, Mamdani's campaign has laid bare the fault lines within South Asian America itself. The community is deeply divided by class, caste, religion, and migration history. Hindu and Sikh landlords are wary of his rent control policies, and business owners baulk at 'handouts' like affordable groceries and free buses. Such contradictions show that South Asian America, long viewed as a model minority monolith, is actually a battleground of conflicting values, economic interests, and visions of belonging.
As his campaign has gained momentum leading up to election day on June 24, Mamdani has also faced severe backlash for his progressive, Socialist politics. In a scathing editorial opposing his candidacy, The New York Times editorial board wrote, "We do not believe that Mr. Mamdani deserves a spot on New Yorkers' ballots." Right-leaning news-media and political commentators have been much harsher, with personal attacks ranging from his music career as Mr Cardamom, his outspoken stance on Palestine to his public confrontations over Islamophobia to his wife, the Syrian artist Rama Duwaji. And as if all that wasn't enough, a super PAC supporting the disgraced former Democratic mayor Andrew Cuomo darkened Mamdani's beard in a campaign flyer — blowing a dog whistle so loud it could be heard in every South Asian household that knows what it means to be "too Muslim" in post-9/11 America.
The truth is, whether they admit it or not, Mamdani's detractors know, just like his supporters do, that win or lose, his campaign will have far-reaching consequences for American politics beyond the borders of New York City. Mamdani's refusal to be boxed in by either liberal identity politics or conservative 'patriotism' marks a new era of how candidates of colour can run with strong groundwork rooted in grassroots organising, progressive policies, and sharp social media strategies, even without establishment support.
If Mamdani wins, he won't just be the first South Asian Muslim mayor of New York. He'll be living proof that cultural belonging and political power don't have to be mutually exclusive, even in a deeply-divided America; that immigrant stories still have a place within the American dream, and intersectional, inclusive policies can become winning strategies, not just feel-good moral victories.
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